Various different types of protective garments exist that are designed to protect the wearer in the environment in which the garment is worn. For instance, various protective garments exist that are intended to be fire resistant. Such garments are worn by military personnel, industrial workers, pilots, rescue personnel, and firefighters.
Firefighter garments, for instance, are intended to not only protect the firefighter from exposure to fires but are also designed to be water resistant. Firefighter garments typically include multiple layers of materials. For example, firefighter garments typically include an outer shell attached to an inner lining or face cloth. The firefighter garment may include intermediate layers, such as a moisture barrier layer and/or a thermal barrier layer. Each layer can be made from fire resistant materials, such as fire resistant fibers and yarns.
Many protective garments, such as firefighter garments, are intended not only to protect the wearer from fire and other elements, but the garments should also be comfortable to wear. For example, firefighter garments that do not provide water resistance may absorb water during use and increase in weight thereby increasing the load on the wearer.
The inner lining of protective garments as described above should also display high lubricity characteristics. A low friction inner lining, for instance, makes it much easier to don the garment and to take the garment off later. A low friction inner lining also can substantially increase the comfort of the garment during use, especially when the wearer is actively moving. Ultimately, a low friction inner lining can reduce the amount of stress imposed on the wearer, especially when worn in harsh environments.
In this regard, those skilled in the art in the past have attempted to produce inner linings for protective garments that are not only fire resistant but also have excellent lubricity characteristics. For example, inner linings made from multi-filament yarns and spun yarns are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,247,179, 5,858,888, and U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 20130205481 which are incorporated herein by reference. The inner linings disclosed in the above patents have provided great advancements in the art demonstrated by significant commercial success. U.S. Pat. No. 5,539,928 and U.S. Patent Publication No. 2009/0255038, which are also both incorporated herein by reference, also disclose inner liners having high lubricity characteristics.
One problem with prior inner lining fabrics, however, is that the fabrics have not had balanced properties in the warp direction and the fill direction. For instance, many prior fabrics had better properties in one direction in comparison to a perpendicular direction. Unbalanced shrinkage characteristics, for instance, can cause fabrics to lose dimensional stability after being laundered. Unbalanced shrinkage characteristics can especially have adverse consequences in relatively lightweight fabrics, such as inner liners.
The present disclosure is directed to further improvements in the construction of protective garments and particularly in the construction of high lubricity liners for protective garments. More particularly, the present disclosure is directed to producing inner lining fabrics that have more balanced properties in both the warp direction and the fill direction. In one embodiment, for instance, the present disclosure is directed to an inner lining for a fire resistant garment that has balanced shrink properties in both the warp direction and the fill direction.